Like the Next Will Never Come
by Mostly Harmless III
Summary: We've all gotta go. Dean plans on doing it with a smile.


Author: Mostly Harmless

Warnings: Violence, language, spoilers. Falls somewhere at the beginning of season 3. I can't even digest season 3 properly to write it.

Summary: We've all gotta go. Dean's gonna do it with a smile.

Rating: R

* * *

Like the Next will Never Come

* * *

The bar had looked a lot better before, but not by much. Sam tries to let this be a comfort. There were antlers on the wall, and that's about all you needed to see to get the idea. Whether you missed the ancient jukebox or not, you saw the antlers.

Dean was whipcord lean but walked like a bulldog. The bulky coats and layered shirts gave him breadth and weight that maybe fooled one or two guys before a fight, but not many.

They sized him up; saw right through the rough-and-tumble stubble and the scraped cheek. They saw what everyone eventually saw: a scrawny pretty boy with longer lashes than their girlfriends' and lips twice as pouty. And, hell, you couldn't even blame them for thinking they had a fighting chance.

Sam knew they were wrong and he almost felt for them. Dean hit hard and kept hitting even when his knuckles split and bruised or his fingers broke. When they were kids, they'd never fought over toys or control of the remote. They'd fought to know how to fight when something worse than your dumb brother came along. Dad had told them they were fighting to live and Dean had always been hungry for life. Sadly, today, the fight was just about a poker game.

The guy with the concussion and the broken chair draped across his back had accused Dean of cheating. His three big buddies had agreed. The actual fight started when Dean pulled a line about the guy's mother from his gutter-trash vocabulary and unleashed it with a smirk and a wink. No one within earshot of that scorcher had blamed Tiny with the tattoo for tossing the table, grabbing the pretty boy by his collar and shaking some sense into him. Well, Dean had taken offense—to the accusation of cheating and to the attack— but nobody really wanted to hear what he had to say.

Sam felt a headache starting. Dean _had_ been cheating. Dealing from the bottom, counting cards, and pocketing the aces—every trick he knew and more. Worse, while Tiny was trying and failing to land a punch, Dean got hold of his wallet. Not a soul but Sam saw, of that he was sure. It was a messier, oddly refined version of the bump and snatch. If Sam had to name it, he'd call it the "Punch and Grab" or…something like that.

The last guy went down with an ungainly swivel and a thud. And maybe Dean got his wallet, too. Sam didn't catch that because now there were antlers on the _floor_ instead and he wasn't sure if it was an improvement.

Dean staggered back, wiped sweat and blood off his face with the sleeve of his shirt, and then looked at Sam with a devil-may-care smile. The patrons of the bar were standing around the edges, looking on quietly at the mess. Somebody so scrawny had caused so much trouble, they were thinking, not knowing how lucky they were because Dean could do much, much worse. Dean grabbed his winnings from the floor and his coat from under Bruiser Number Three, and called out to his brother.

"Come on, Sammy. Looks like we've overstayed our welcome." The coat went on and he gained thirty pounds.

"It's 'Sam'," was the whispered reply and Sam had never meant it so much. His brother was just embarrassing. He hadn't even tipped the waitress he'd been flirting with.

Outside, Dean looked triumphant. His breath steamed in the air. "Whoa, Tiny was loaded. We're all set to go."

"Dean, you just trashed a bar. And go _where_?"

Dean tossed a newspaper clipping at him, folded up and wrinkled from a deep pocket. "While you were snoozing, I was looking for our next gig."

Sam read the article circled in red. "Mysterious Deaths Plague Southeast Missouri?" He raised a brow. The picture in black and white was still gruesome.

Dean slid into the driver's seat saying, "Yeah, ain't it cool?"

* * *

When you know you've got a year to live, you really _live_. Everything you taste might be the last time you taste it so you learn to savor, to imprint on a memory with an expiration date. Chicago style pizza, good and hot; bad sushi in the middle of Topeka; worse lasagna just outside of Joplin; green tea flavored ice cream at a cheap roadside stand in Kissimmee.

When you have a year to live, you never stop thinking about the order of things.

Anything done for the first time is memorable just because, when you're honest with yourself—late at night when no one is there to hear the wheels in your mind turning—yeah, it's not _really _the fact that it's the first time that matters. It's the fact that it's the last time in disguise. One and the same.

The hotel they're staying at, they've stopped into before. Different room, same bad art on the walls. Along with the bible in the top drawer, Dean finds a battered copy of "Interview with the Vampire."

Something makes him read a bit, and then read a bit more.

Halfway through, he starts to think: vampires are some whiny bitches.

He can't sleep, so he keeps reading.

To be continued…

Welcome, to another one of the WIPs that I've got floating around my hard drive. I still can't guarantee I'll finish it, but this one is newer. I just wanted to post something and…I dunno, maybe get some feedback on my idea of the boys. I've READ a lot of Supernatural fic, but never written it. This is my first try and it would be nice to hear what you think.


End file.
